Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax
by Secret Agent Smut Girl
Summary: Maybe he wasn't meant for running but he doesn't know what to say.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax (1/1)  
**Author:** SecretAgentSmutGirl  
**Rating:** PG  
**Summary:** The time has come to speak of many things, but after so many months of silence Matt isn't sure he has the voice to speak.  
**Disclaimer:** I don't even own the computer this was typed on yet.

** A/N:** First foray into the fandom with angst galore. Enjoy!

Matt is still a policeman.

He still wakes up after not enough sleep, with barely a cup of coffee in him he holsters his gun and pockets the badge because that's what he was born to do. He doesn't believe in destiny anymore, but he knows without the routine everything in his life would fall apart like a sandcastle under the tide. He knows that it is an illusion, this routine that gives him a small feeling of control over his life, but it keeps him from staying in bed all day or worse.

In this part of the city, at this time of year, the morning beat is slow but the days all blend together. Too many taxis, too many commuter all full of thoughts that, even now, seep into his unconscious through the traffic and the rolled up windows of his cruiser.

He doesn't know why he stays in New York.

He realizes that there is nothing for him there now, just like he knows there was never anything for him in L.A. either. Fifty states to choose from and none more appealing than the last. At least in New York he has been somebody, he isn't anyone any longer, but he was something special once. He did special things. He knew special people. There was destiny then, not just for him but for the world..

There is nothing now. Only the taste of bad diner coffee in his mouth and a killer headache that he hasn't been able to shake since he watched Nathan Petrelli die in his arms. It's been one year, three months and a handful of days. People have been born and died everyday since that day, but for Matt Parkman time has frozen in a non-special way.

He's a study in damage, but what takes the cake is that he always has been. It just baffles him what a fine line he had been walking and how it took less than a year to topple him over.

Another cruiser passes by and the officer waves. Matt notices that the light in front of him is green and steps on the gas.

It is almost morning again by the time he makes his way home. His one bedroom palace is completely painted white and kept neat as a pin. The dark comfort of clutter is to tempting and after the crush of being part of a husband and wife unit, and then of being a family unit complete with perfect, special daughter it is only fitting that to be alone should be the opposite of all that.

Matt sheds his clothes on his way to his bedroom. He's in bed before he even gets both his shoes off. He's asleep a heartbeat later.

In the end it was easier to extract himself from his life than he'd thought it would be. With Maya to hide there was less room and it was only a matter of suggestion on his part, on his minds part, to show the logic of him getting his own place. His own removed place. Someplace where he wouldn't have to see the look of vulnerability and guilt in Mohinder's eyes, the fear in Molly's or the way they both flinched every time a door opened or a phone rang.

At that time Mohinder's thoughts were thankful that Matt hadn't been around when Sylar swept back into their lives, but just as often they are condemning, full of blame that he wasn't there with his support, his gun and some supposed strength save them and the cheerleaders blood. While their eyes were loving, their thoughts implied that he'd ultimately failed them and he couldn't live like that. It was too much, too soon. The blood on his hands was barely dry and he was given a cross to bear as well.

So he took the cowards way out.

He took the Parkman way out.

He walked.

Unlike Maury, and his exit of epic proportion back lit by broken families and dreams, Matt just made them forget. Not forget him, just forget to look for him. Forget to wonder where he was, or that he was supposed to come home or be there at all. Forget that he'd failed them. That he'd failed Nathan. That he'd failed himself.

Destiny painted him as his father son. Just as his father was trapped in his memories, so was Matt. No cushy coma, just paralyzed by potential. Afraid of going on and living when Nathan couldn't, of being a negligent father who through absence let his daughter witness grief, bear kidnap and near death.

Sometimes he wondered what happened to being a good man. He wondered when being a good man stopped being enough.

The coffeehouse that he favors is one of those collegiate hangouts that has the worn feeling of a college common area, but college coffee came by pocket change and was valued for caffeine and sugar content not its pedigree. Matt orders a latte, though he still doesn't know what that means but it seems simpler than a machiatto or some South African blends with descriptive phrases that even the non-dyslexic can't wade through.

He makes his way to the second floor seating, against the windows that look down into a tiny courtyard that boasts an urban garden of newly planted annuals and a sapling that is just starting to bloom. The smell of coffee is soothing and Sundays are his favorite days because Sunday morning thoughts don't hurt as much.

Neutral thoughts lull him so well that he smells the chai and thinks _Mohinder _before he notices him, the man, sliding into the chair across the table from him. Mohinder has the kind of eyes that were made for poets to write volumes about and even now, when this appearance means that his compulsion has worn off, there is no censure in those eyes. Or in his thought, which are of the neutral Sunday variety as far as he can tell- but then he's talking and his voice is perfect. "Hello, Matthew. Do you think you're prepared to talk now?"

Matt wonders where the blame went, if it was ever there, or if it was always just inside himself. All he can do is breathe, try to smile and admit that whatever a latte is, it's a good crutch for him to hold on to. You can only run away for so long. Maybe he wasn't mean for running but he doesn't know what to say.

But he does, and he's looking Mohinder in the eye and letting him see the turmoil inside him, letting himself feel the connection to home, real home, that he's denied himself. He finds himself, his ridiculous sense of bravery, and he says, "Yeah, I guess I am."

Never one for books, Matt was always one for movies and their conversation flows like a cheesy montage of all the things that need to be said and some that don't but come naturally. For a mind reader Matt feels pretty stupid but being able to read minds tells him that for a genius, Mohinder feels pretty stupid, too. They are both stubborn and stupid, they are both hurting and alone but they ought to be stupid/stubborn/hurting and together.

In this scenario Molly would say, _well duh_.

When everything is said and done and the latte has gone cold, and their hands have crept across the table, wary at first but with purpose, to join that's when Mohinder smiles and tells him, "Come home," and it's more powerful than any compulsion in the world.


	2. Chapter 2

**Title:** Of Cabbages and Kings (1/1)  
**Author: **SecretAgentSmutGirl  
**Rating:** PG  
**Summary:** Mohinder has a very specific routine, he wonders why he keeps to it when it doesn't work.  
**Disclaimer:** I don't even own the computer this was typed on yet.

**A/N:** The Mohinder perspective, just begged itself into being.

Science makes sense to Mohinder.

Long tallies, lab results, petri dishes- those are the things the he pursues and dreams about. His mind can make ten non-linear leaps a heartbeat but abstracts, real every day problems and relations, make him fall short.

His assistant, drops off the evening labs without a word.

Mohinder watches her go, considers wishing her a good night but doesn't bother. People, they don't make much sense and he's pretty well given up on changing that fact. He is bad at reading people but he is pretty sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that his assistant hates him. He's sure he's been perfectly civil to her, but her figures are always wrong and his coffee is always cold, and it never crosses his mind that she might not be that bright.

It does cross his mind that she might actually be a company minder more than a proper assistant. He is oblivious to a lot of things, more accurately was oblivious but he is bright and he is catching on, to being babysat and kept under camera surveillance. He's ok with not being trusted because science speaks for itself.

If he lives for science, it's routines and timetables that make him tick.

Every day he wakes up and gets Molly off to school, with attention to combed hair and pressed clothes. He makes himself tea, using a kettle and never the microwave, but tends to forget it at home in his mad dash rush to get to his lab. Every day is the same morning routine. Every day he is nearly late for work. Mohinder, as a rule, is never late. Logically the routine doesn't make sense if it isn't organized in such a way as to keep him from being tardy.

Patterns clearly need to be adjusted.

The Shanti Virus. Even that makes sense to him, now but not before, since he was able to make contact with Claire Bennet under the company radar. Noah Bennet wanted her safe from the company, but Claire Bennet wanted to do right by her biological father. So blood is donated, life goes on with nary a nefarious purpose and for the life of him, he doesn't know why he isn't gratified.

Clicking off the light to the microscope, Mohinder buried his head in his hands and tries to reason out his life.

It's never that easy.

Once he'd read the suicide rates amongst scientists, not that he'd been surprised of the results because genius breeds madness, and though he can't remember the figures he never considered the cause. Morbid thoughts, like idle thoughts and dirty thoughts, were things that he no longer entertained in mixed company. Not that he could tell you why, but he was an organized man. It only made sense that he'd organize his random thoughts the same way he'd color code his shirts or put boxes of cereal in order by height.

Which are perfectly normal things to do.

Molly doesn't organize and lately she doesn't verbalize, and Mohinder wonders what caused the change in demeanor. He doesn't wonder about the organization. She's 10. It's hard to believe that she's ten and seen a lifetimes worth of pain and complicated adult emotion. Parents murdered, detained by men in black, or rather man in horned rimmed glasses, and then loss. More loss.

There's more to it than just that, but that bears consideration he's not quite sure he' ready for that train of thought.

Molly cries on her birthday and Mohinder is baffled.

It's late, past the cake and presents and even television broadcasting isn't trying to market to the under 20 market, and she sits on the couch with her knees pulled up to her chest and cries. She looks forlorn for lack of a better word, though there should be a better word because the world isn't right if a ten year old is forlorn, and it is breaking his heart.

He's never been good with people or emotion, but Molly loves him as her dad and he's taken her into his arms before his brain even processes how he should deal with her grief. She's fused into his shoulder, sniffling into the arm of of his pink polo which he only wears to make her laugh so things are all wrong, and he whispers, "Why are you crying," which only makes her cry more.

If there had been a course at University on social niceties he would have taken it and excelled- but some things you have to learn on your own.

Stupid genius, but lucky to be good looking.

When the tears stop and the television turns into a crime drama, they all look the same to him, Molly pulls back and looks him calmly in the eye and she says, earnest and tear soaked, "Make Matt come home. Please, Mohinder, it's all I really want for my birthday. Tell him I won't be bad anymore."

If his heart were made of glass instead of muscles and tendons, blood and tissue, it would have cracked. Shattered. It does shatter, despite it's organic make up, and in that instance there is adrenaline and surety and Mohinder knows that he has to do whatever it takes to make things right.

He kisses the crown of her head, so soft, closes his eyes and reassures her, "It's nothing that you did, sweetheart," but his mind is reeling that she thinks Matt left because she misbehaved. That she could do anything to push anyone way. He thinks, what a ludicrous thought for such a well behaved child- then for the first time in months he stops thinking all together- but his brain is quick to start moving again.

Matt left.

It is a tired cliché, pithy and beneath him even if he does have a weakness for bad jokes, but life in that instant starts to make sense again. There has been something missing. A whole person missing. The person who gets Molly ready for school, who hands him his tea on the way out the door and makes the mess that he is always so convinced he is going to find when he comes home from work. The reason he censors his thoughts and lets crime dramas play as ambient noise as he slaves over his laptop, alone well into every night.

The reason there are too many pillows in his bed and at the same time too much room.

He's been so stupid, and it all comes so clear that he can't be mad at himself for not noticing or even mad at Matt for leaving. However, he is mad that his lap is full of their crying daughter who thinks that she's done wrong.

Mohinder imagines finding Matt after all this time and can't conjure up any anger on his part, yet it's Molly who suffers. If he possessed an ability such as Matt's, who is to say he wouldn't have taken the same way out, bow out with no fanfare and hide in his lab like they always joked he might. Hadn't he tried to flee, before Matt and Molly because cowardice breeds true, but he knows now that running from things isn't the answer.

He left and Eden died.

Nathan Petrelli died and Matt left.

They always find you, the universal odds and the law of bad luck. They always find you, the monsters, the boogeymen, the Sylars of the world. They always find the ones you love, hurt the ones you love, kill the ones you love and Mohinder knows why Matt did what he did even if the truth doesn't make it any less appalling.

What kind of self loathing was the man living in now? He could imagine, he didn't have to imagine, because he'd seen Matt in that shadow box before. After Kirby Plaza. Post Maury Parkman. Now Nathan Petrelli.

He'd laugh bitterly but it would only upset Molly. Wallowing isn't a logical course of action and if Molly is organic global positioning he imagines that his brains capability to reason out puzzles is his very own special ability.

Matt had left them for nothing, was suffering for nothing.

His brain itemizes. Sylar is the business of the Company, released into the wild but tagged like any other beast by satellite and he knows that Molly glances for him, like any other child would say their prayers, before bed. A boogeyman, unsubstantial, fit for nightmares. The crux of it, the bitter irony, is that Nathan Petrelli is, thanks to his daughter, alive and kept secret, kept safe.

With all the causes gone there should be no more symptom and it's done.

It's only logical.

So he finds him.

And when he he says "Come home", Matt follows


End file.
